


Aurora + Coding + Sleep

by EWM



Series: Comfortember (myfirstone!!) [23]
Category: MacGyver (TV 2016)
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Gen, Mac and Riley, Mac and Riley being a couple, Mac and Riley being friends, Romance, a little bit of whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-25
Updated: 2020-11-25
Packaged: 2021-03-10 03:14:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,234
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27716660
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EWM/pseuds/EWM
Summary: Mac and Riley chat while they wait for the doctor to examine Mac after his miraculous recovery in hospital. (Hospital Room + Cast + Dark Thoughts - CHAPTER 3 as well)Written for comfortember day 23 -  EXHAUSTION
Relationships: Riley Davis & Angus MacGyver (MacGyver TV 2016), Riley Davis/Angus MacGyver (MacGyver TV 2016)
Series: Comfortember (myfirstone!!) [23]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1996306
Comments: 4
Kudos: 23
Collections: Comfortember 2020





	Aurora + Coding + Sleep

As Riley lay there with Mac’s arm around her, her tiredness and stress caught up with her. One of her arms was going numb and the other she’s had tentatively placed across his chest, doing her best not to hurt him. She blinked several times in an effort to stay awake, but despite her best efforts the adrenaline that had just about kept her functional for the last few days poured out of her into a puddle on the floor. The doctor’s words about keeping awake were in her mind, so she gave her head a little shake and when she registered Mac falling asleep next to her and prodded him gently

“Hey, you’re supposed to stay awake remember. The doctor told you, you have to be up for more tests or something and everyone will want to see you too.”

“Right of course, awake. I can do that.”

They both avoided the subject of Desi, but kept each other close all the same.

“So what do you want to talk about?”

“Not really sure”

“Come on Mac, you can talk for anything usually.”

“Apologies, I’m not at my best at 3am.”

“What was Jack’s phrase? Dazzle me with some brilliance.”

Mac snorted and did his best to come up with something

“Okay, so you remember the Aurora Borealis”

“What?”

“You said come up with something, I’m coming up with something.”

“I’m with you, shinning lights in the sky I’m there. Green dye across the night sky.”

“It’s not technically dye, but yeah, right ballpark.”

“Continue Mac, come on”

“Fine, fine. Okay so the bright dancing lights of the aurora that you describe as green dye are actually collisions between electrically charged particles from the sun that enter the earth's atmosphere. The lights are seen above the magnetic poles of the northern and southern hemispheres.”

“You took the dazzle part, literally didn’t you?”

“Do you want me to continue?”

“Yes, sorry, I promise not interrupt again.”

“Anyway the sets of ‘lights’ they are known as 'Aurora borealis' in the north and 'Aurora australis' in the south.. Auroral displays appear in lots of different colours although pale green and pink are the most common. Shades of red, yellow, green, blue, and violet have been reported. I’ve only ever seen the green ones myself; I’d love to be able to see red and yellow. The lights appear in many forms from patches or scattered clouds of light to streamers, arcs, rippling curtains or shooting rays that light up the sky with an eerie glow.”

“Sounds like the little green men took too much ecstasy”

Mac snorted

“So, tell me why the different colours?”

Mac looked at Riley in surprise, she had wedged herself comfortably next to him, leaning on her elbow. He eased his arm off from around her, so he could sit up more easily.

“You really want to know this?”

“I wouldn’t have asked if I didn’t right?”

Mac nodded and continued on

“Okay well the different colours are dependent on the gases, basically the colour of the aurora depends on which gas **is** being excited by the electrons and on how much energy **is** being exchanged. Oxygen emits either a greenish-yellow light (or a red light; nitrogen generally gives off a blue light.”

“So, there’s more oxygen where the green ones show up?”

“I guess yeah, at that specific bit of the atmosphere, the gas interacting with a higher percentage of oxygen that Nitrogen.”

“Cool.”

“I always thought so.”

“Have you ever seen them? Wait sorry you said you had.”

“Yeah only once, Jack and I were sent to Greenland. Everything went wrong (no I’m not telling you that story. Anyway we got stuck in the middle of the ice waiting for the exfil chopper to arrive and there they were. Despite the horror of the situation I was amazed…I mean it was like…it’s hard to describe. The light was dancing Riles, the green was dancing on the air or that’s how it seemed to me anyway. It was one of the few times I remember Jack speechless (if you can picture that)”

“It sounds amazing, I’d love to see them some day.”

“I’ll take you”

“Preferably without the freezing to death.”

“Obviously, us it would be more, hot coffee and a walk in the snow.”

“You’ve really thought about this haven’t you?”

“Sometimes, in my quieter moments.”

“You have quieter moments in that head of yours?”

“Sometimes…”

Riley giggled, she doubted that was true. Mac’s brain never stopped working, stopped spinning, she occasionally wondered if he even knew what the word quiet even meant

“Okay your turn…”

“My turn?”

“I’ve done my bit to try and keep us awake, you do it now”

“Okay what do you want me to talk about?”

“Anything, you pick.”

“That’s not fair, I’m hardly going to match sparkling greenlights in the sky?”

“Come on Riles…anything”

“Okay….coding?”

“Fine by me, go full throttle.”

“Okay, so I guess the first coding language I ever taught myself was HTML”

“That’s HyperText Markup Language right?”

“Very good”

“Thanks, I do listen, honest.”

“Anyway HTML, I guess could be described as one of the building blocks of the web, it’s certainly one of the most important foundations on the web as a whole . Basically every website out there has at least some HTML, there’s plenty of other languages that produce more elaborate designs or more complicated functions, but HTML is at least part of the core….I mean..”

“Why do you code?”

“What?”

“Sorry I didn’t mean to interrupt, but I always wondered, why do you do it? I mean why do you like doing it?”

“I suppose I do it for, I mean….well why do you like building stuff??”

“Hey this isn’t about me, it’s about you.”

“You first”

“Fine, I build things, I fix things just because I like doing it. I like understanding how the world works and connecting stuff…I guess.”

“There you go…same logic.”

Mac waited for a more detailed explanation, although he knew how computers work, he’d never really got them as a device and he’d always been fascinated by Riley’s ability to take them apart

“Okay so, you like building things and fixing things. Me too, I like understanding how computers work and being able to code is part of that. Look at it this way, if you can code, even if you have the most basic computer in the world, you can still build virtually anything on the web, get into anything. All the doors are still open to you…you can understand everything..”

“So it’s kind of like my swiss army knife?”

“I guess, although I admit I never really thought it like that.”

After that the duo lapsed into a companiable silence and sleep in the way that it so often does over took them. Riley fell asleep first, squishing her arm. Mac watched her quietly, when he was sure she was asleep, he heaved his cast up leg off its hanging support sling and onto the blankets, below. He shifted himself around so he could face her, he lifted himself around fully onto side and then pulled some of the blanket that had been covering the rest of him onto her. He registered her purr as she felt the warmth on top of her, he grinned and shut his eyes, doctors orders be damned.

**Author's Note:**

> Just a note, all my technical explanations came from online. I've altered them a bit to try and make them more reliable, but they are very much from the web :)


End file.
